Ira Reese

Director & CTO

Mr. Reese is Director and Chief Technology Officer at GSIS after almost 44 years in public service. At GSIS, Mr. Reese will advise clients on a broad range of national homeland security matters, technology and Harmonized Tariff/Trade rules, including supply chain security, counterterrorism, trade enforcement and regulation, criminal forensics, Officer use of force, Federal technology acquisition, as well as nuclear and narcotics intelligence and detection.

Mr. Reese served as the Executive Director of Laboratories and Scientific Services at Customs and Border Protection, CBP’s forensic and scientific arm with flagship, satellite and mobile laboratories, an engineering group, and an emergency response center. Personnel under his leadership included chemists, textile analysts, nuclear physicists, forensic scientists, engineers, digital forensics specialists and Laboratory Directors. Included in his responsibilities during his 17-year tenure as Executive Director were Trade Enforcement, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Intellectual Property Rights, the Harmonized Tariff System, and narcotics enforcement and digital forensics. As Executive Director, Mr. Reese managed both the operations and budget for the scientific/forensics Directorate. In this capacity Mr. Reese also oversaw the engineering group that was responsible for developing specifications and grading rules used for the acquisition of border security systems as well as the deployment of the acquired systems. This unit worked with other government units and private industry to improve border security systems.

Mr. Reese has worked with international governments and Fortune 500 companies on security issues related to secure different modes of transport for a variety of supply chains worldwide. As Chairman of the World Customs Organization Scientific Subcommittee for more than a decade, Mr. Reese brings additional international border and customs relationships to GSIS as well as experience developing international trading rules around control of weapons of mass destruction, trans-national crime syndicates, chemical weapons, the Harmonized Tariff System and environmental hazards.

In 2014 Mr. Reese was awarded the Health Physics Society Presidential Award for developing, deploying, and managing the United States’ border radiation detection equipment and response mechanisms used to interdict radioactive materials entering the United States.